🌴San Diego!🌴part uno

Day 1

Had a rough and long night traveling to San Diego with Greyhound but we finally made it at 8:40am!

I was surprised to see so many high rise and modern buildings in the distance when we arrived at the bus station but at the same time it was a really dodgy area with homeless people everywhere and so that was rather confusing. We later found out that the bus station was located in the 'bad' areas of San Diego. Anyway, our first stop was to get food (obviously!!) at Anthem vegan! 

I had a 'Chicken' waffle with berries & eggplant bacon and Topo had a biscuit and gravy dish with a 'salmon' thing (can't recall ☹) - but breakfast was really yum and so filling and after, we headed to our Tiny home air bnb, which was just adorable and so lovely!!

my dream come true :')))

We got up the ladder to our bed and that's the view from the bed (right pic) 

Tired us decided to take a rest day and so we headed to the cinema to watch Ocean's 8, which I thoroughly enjoyed! #girlpower 

We then got some groceries for dinner and headed back for a delicious meal of ramen and kungpao chicken!! 

Doesn't look fantastic but sure tasted fantastic 

Day 2

The next morning, we moved out of the tiny home (it was so expensive that we could only afford one night) and moved in to our next air bnb! We met Evan (who looks exactly like Oberyn from GOT) and he showed us round his lovely house and our room, which was soooo cosy! It also had netflix on the tele which was perfect. He gave us excellent recommendations for the day and so we ended up at the broadway pier and got round trip tickets to Coronado Island (I grabbed an iced chai latte before boarding the ferry and it was one of the best chai lattes I've had - but the one from P.S. cafe in Singapore still ranks #1)

This was at the pier 

Coronado Island! 

Coronado Island had buildings like these, a beautiful beach and also the most perfect neighborhood I've seen! It was just like in the movies with green lawns and white picket fences 

We rented bikes and had a lovely cycle around the island! 

After the scenic bike ride, we headed back to the main city and went to Donna Jean for dinner 

We had an Easy Tiger chorizo pizza, a super creamy carbonara pasta and a wild-rice chorizo salad! 

Food was so good!! 

We then went for a wander through Balboa park, the largest urban park in the US, which has 16 museums within the park - insanity!

and a fun fact: You hear and see planes fly through San Diego every 2 minutes!! (well in our experience at least) 

The themes/buildings/areas in Balboa park were so diverse and stunning!! 

We then headed back to our air bnb and watched breaking bad hehe 

Day 3 

Had a rather late start to the day (something I'm proud of because I'm the kind of person who loves getting the most out of every day when traveling and hence I would always want to get up really early and start exploring the city by 9am - so having experienced a few late days in America was something I'm proud to have learnt to do!) and we headed to the National History Museum in Balboa Park. My favourite bit of the museum was the 30min 3D movie about our oceans, which were basically shots from Blue Planet II, but I still loved! 

After the museum, we went to Wonderspaces, an art exhibit by the pier, which was recommended by Evan and his wife Angela. It was rather quirky and 'hipster' like - alternative art let's just say. It was cool but at the same time not something I'd enjoy often. Personally I felt that it was just a place for people who wanted to take 'cool pics on Instagram'. 

We were both famished (and me hangry) by the time we left the exhibit and quickly found a spot nearby for lunch - a vegan drive-through called Evolution Fast Food! 

The patty was the Beyond Meat burger (the ones we had in San Fransisco) but the combination of the other toppings and the sauces just took this burger to a new level! It was so good that Topo ordered 2 burgers!! 

With satisfied tummies, we headed to Sunset Cliff Boulevard! We got into an uber with a crazy lady who was an artist manager (whatever the title is) and she was blasting her client's music so loudly in the car and not paying attention to the road let alone whether we wanted to listen to her music. Anyway, Sunset Cliffs was absolutely stunning!!

Spot the mermaid on the rock!! Apparently someone swam and climbed that rock and placed the mermaid there hahah

This cool old man was just enjoying the breeze and smoking pot

Was such a lovely end to the day sitting at the edge of the cliffs, watching people surf and hearing waves crashing against the shore :))

Knowledge

Yes, knowledge is power. 

But knowledge also comes with responsibility. 

A responsibility to act with the knowledge that you have gained. 

And that could come with a range of emotions from excitement, feeling inspired or also stress, anxiety or helplessness. 

I feel so torn between feeling inspired and helpless with regards to the knowledge I have gained throughout university about humans and the environment. I feel inspired because I have just learnt so much about the environment, new concepts of analysis on environmental issues and have had so many meaningful conversations with friends environmental issues that we face today and particularly revolving around human's interaction with the environment. At the same time, I feel so helpless because I also learnt that my efforts in making a positive change on the environment or rather reducing my environmental impact, is futile. Whilst here I am being a vegan, someone elsewhere in the world could be consuming twice as much meat as a regular person. Or my diet may not even be that sustainable because the foods that vegans eat can be quite resource intensive as well. Whilst here I am trying my best to live a minimal-waste lifestyle, so many people are just not making a great enough effort when it comes to reducing their plastic waste let alone waste as a whole. 

Being objective is extremely important, we always need to see both sides of the story before making a clear decision on which side to be on. However, I now understand why people sometimes say that ignorance is bliss. 

After reading the book Sapiens (which I highly recommend everyone read), I had an epiphany that humans literally made up our entire way of life. Nations, borders, governments, the education system, careers, corporations and money being the biggest one of them all, are all fictitious. We have made them all up and to think that we are so deeply embedded in this fictitious reality that there is no backing out (well unless there was a revolution, which I don't think would be successful any time soon). At the same time, we can't dwell over this and be depressed over what the hell we are doing with our lives as slaves to this system because this is the only way we know how to live and has been for years. What we can do, is make the most out of it and live the best life we know. 

Ending with that, I shall make an effort to continuously remind myself not to feel too down when I feel like I'm not making a big enough impact when it comes to doing environmental good because every small effort is still a positive effort and it will amount to the greater good. I am also incredibly grateful for the few friends who understand and share my pain when it comes to trying to live a sustainable lifestyle around people who do not live in the same way or do not even see eye to eye with these issues. You can never tell people how they should or should not live. It has to come from within themselves for their efforts to be long-lasting and sustainable. 

Sighhhhhhhhhh

ok that's enough feeling sad over this issue!! Bye!!

Vegas and the Grand Canyon

A stressful and rushed morning left us with a slim 5 mins window from arriving at the Greyhound bus station to getting on our bus but we made it!! 5 hours later, we arrived in the desert city of Vegas 

We checked into Stratosphere hotel, which we managed to get a really good deal for and this was our view from our room! 

We then got an uber to Vegenation and the food was incredible! 

We shared a mexican jackfruit mole dish, dumplings and a chicken pot pie ! 

We then made the mistake (ok well I made the mistake because it was my idea) of walking back to our hotel because it was blazing hot!!! It was a 25 mins walk under direct sunlight with no shade whatsoever 

Once we got back to the cool hotel, we decided to have a shot at roulette and it was so much fun! The dealers were so professional and there were so many rules that made it just so official - well I'm sure it is the same in all casinos but because this was my very first time in a casino, it was so much to take in and I was just really impressed yet intimidated because everyone else seemed like they knew what they were doing 

Anyway, Topo and I managed to make decent winnings! We consciously made an effort not to be too greedy and learn when to stop and it was a really good experience because I could understand (from my short experience) how addicts become addicts at the casinos. I found it really mind boggling how one could feel so in despair from having lost something that they didn't even own in the first place e.g. winning $40 and losing it the next round and feeling so annoyed without even remembering that the $40 of winnings literally came out of thin air!! 

After that cool experience and really nice chats with some of the dealers, we checked out the pool which had a really nice view of the city and then headed back to our room for dinz 

Another mistake made - we ordered room service 

T'was a mistake because the $6.50 fries became $13 after taxes 

- cries -

We had our extremely overpriced fries with lettuce and mushroom patties and 'cheese'! 

and it turned out to be a really yummy DIY dinner ☺

The next morning, we got up at 5:40 am to start our day trip to the Grand Canyon! 

We were shocked when we entered the lobby of our hotel because there were still people sitting at the slots machines - and no they did not wake up at 5 in the morning to come and play, they've been sitting there the whole night. 

Our first stop on our tour was to the Hoover Dam! It powers the entire state of California, Arizona and Nevada 

Our next stop was the Route 66! Where real-life inspiration for Cars (the disney movie) was drawn from ☺

and we then finally got to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon!!

Can you spot the tiny people

Personally, I preferred Yosemite because we were actually hiking in the park as compared to the Grand Canyon, I felt like I was just a spectator because I was not immersed in the environment 

The vastness of it was still really incredible and I would love to come back and actually hike within the park 

We did the short and sweet Rim Trail to the visitor's centre

and look at this cutie elk drinking water! 

After we reached the visitors centre, we managed to quickly grab dinner to-go at a restaurant there because we knew that In-N-Out didn't have many promising vegan options (which was the planned dinner destination with our bus tour)

We stopped at In-N-Out and ordered fries with fried onions and chilis to go with our dinner, but they were so bland and underwhelming 

The drive back to our hotel was so nice because we got a free night tour of the city! It was perfect because the bus dropped the various guests at their respective hotels and ours was one of the last hotels on the list and so we got such a beautiful tour of the city :) 

The next day, we treated ourselves to a surprisingly good and vegan-friendly brunch buffet at the hotel and spent the entire day at the casino hahaha 

We both started feeling not so great after a couple hours because the air in the casino was really bad - not only was it not circulated well, but people were allowed to smoke indoors and so I quickly developed a headache ☹ But the table we were playing at had such a good energy because the couple we were playing with such friendly and fun people, which made the game so much better! 

Our hotel also had thrill rides at the top of the hotel, which were 100 stories above the Vegas strip! As hotel guests, we had the option of getting an unlimited pass and so we did and managed to make good use out of it before we headed to the Greyhound station to catch our bus to San Diego ☺